Forget Me Not Friday

*We were saying prayers as a family this past week and when we finished, Braden announces that he had to open his eyes during the prayer to make sure everyone had their eyes closed! 

*Jon and I were locked in our bathroom trying to talk and just have a moment of silence which never works because a child will always find us and start rattling the door knob.  This time it was Braden.  He took off running as soon as I opened the door.  I followed him to Jay’s room where he quickly threw something under the bed and then proceeded to give me his very obvious lying face.  I said, “Braden, what are you hiding under the bed?”  His reply, “A key.”  “What key Braden?”  “The key that opens the locks on the doors.”  (FYI, those keys are kept above all the doors along the door frame.)  I asked him how on earth he was able to get that high to reach the keys.  He looks at me as proud as he can and said, “Last night when dad gave me a shoulder ride to bed, I reached out and snuck it and then I hid it!”  This little man is wearing me out and I can hardly keep up with his energy level.

* Jon and I bought Braden a magnifying glass so he could get a closer look at all his little critters he captures on a daily basis.  I told Jon to please not show him that you can burn holes in things with this magnifying glass.  I gave it to Braden the next morning and within ten minutes of him having it, I go outside to find him burning holes in leaves!  What the heck?!  Come to find out, Morgan’s sweet little friend that was over showed him how cool it is to burn things with a magnifying glass!!  I hope he doesn’t start the backyard on fire anytime soon especially with how stinking dry it is here these days.

*We are getting together with some friends for the 4^th of July and I thought it would be fun to make a piñata.  So I came up with the idea to just use a priority mailbox box and glue the crate paper to the box rather than gluing all the wheat covered strips of newspaper to a balloon, waiting for each layer to dry (I knew I was short on time since I decided to do this two days before the holiday on top of all the other things I had committed to doing!)  and I couldn’t figure out how to make an oval balloon look like the American flag.  After spending numerous hours on the piñata and I got it looking pretty much like an American flag, I was lying in bed and the thought occurred to me, “How appropriate is it to beat the American flag with a baseball bat?”  My intentions were to do a theme based piñata for the event and I never thought of it as being disrespectful until after the fact.  I have stewed this over in my head for many hours and decided that I am going ahead with it.  There are no intentions of disrespect but rather a celebration of the freedoms we enjoy.

* Listening to the prompting of the spirit paid of this past week.  I had been asked to help out at a scout day camp and as I was leaving the house I thought to myself, “You should take your church keys.”  My next thought was, “There will be enough other people there who have keys, I don’t need to take mine.”

The thought came again to take my keys, so I did.  As we were finishing up preparations for the day camp, the last thing to be done was to set up the volleyball net.  I heard a leader call out that they needed a carabineer to finish setting up the net.  Guess who has a carabineer attached to their church keys?  Yep, that would be me!!

*I ran my first 5K race on the 4^th of July and finished!  37:17 was my time.  Not bad considering I pushed Jaycee in the double stroller through one mile of gravel.

* The girls are always complaining that Braden is spoiled and he always gets his way (which he does with his dad).  Well, now Braden has learned that when things are not going his way, he belts out, “Well it’s not fair that Morgan and Sydney always get their way!”
*The kids are learning some great survival skills ...the first skill being to rob all the neighbors of their honeysuckle blossoms and suck the honeysuckle juice!